April 1995: Stations of the Crass

                                                                                                                 mstanley

 

I am enamored of waiters who go out of their way to accommodate and please. I am—surprise, surprise—enamored of waiters who take time to tell me, genuinely and unobsequiously, who they are. I mean, when was the last time you poked your nose into a group without letting them know whose nose you were? Are waiters the lepers of service? Are they of a caste unworthy of approval; less of an equal than your buddy, the bartender; your pal, the maître  d’, your chum, the host; and your very best friend, the owner? I like great service and I want to know who’s serving it. And, if the service is very, very good, when I return I want the same waiter (if he or she is still there) and I want to ask for him or her by name, not by station, not by description.

Not this time. Not ever.

What I don’t like is being swindled. Never give a sucker an even break? Ha. Once suckered, I learn.

Follow the following: you tell me if I am nuts.

Our magazine is entertaining out-of-town customers at a restaurant they’ve picked because they heard about it and heard that it is very good. We are a party of six. The restaurant is the kind of place where big black cars disgorge white-haired uncles and their nymphet nieces; where wickedly-dressed customers pose at the bar and discuss in stage whispers their most recent clever thing—a clever thing or two possibly, wink-wink, of something unmentionable—while sipping wine spritzers and smoking cigarettes. The activity at the bar is as much a part of the restaurant’s ambiance as the décor.

The restaurant is a fancy steak joint: fancy food and wines (a fancy award from a fancy wine magazine hangs on the wall just beyond the fancy entrance), fancy menu and wine list, fancy prices. Fancy everything.

Fancy this:

The host seats us at a very nice table with a very nice view of nearly everything nice in the very nice room. Most of us are carnivores who wish to wash down our carnivoria with wines. To that end we order two red wines at $60 a bottle. We order appetizers, salads, and large slabs of carnivoria. We order all courses at once so that the kitchen knows to time the order and pace the service.

Within a few minutes out come the sixty-dollar red wines. We examine the labels, sniff the cork, swirl the tasting pour, hold it up to the candlelight (did I mention the fancy candlelight?), taste, nod approvingly to the waiter. He pours the fine red wine. We sip the wine, commenting as we sip how very good it is. We keep on sipping, waiting for our appetizers.

In the meantime, in comes another party of six. It is seated at a table next to ours.

Our water brings some butter and a basket with an assortment of hard and soft rolls. We spread butter on our rolls, nibble our rolls, and sip our fine red wines.

We ask for more rolls, more butter. We sip some more wine.

Finally, out come the appetizers. We are out of wine, so we order two more bottles of 60-bucks-a-pop red wine.

We eat our appetizers and drink our wine. We wait for our salads.

We drink more wine. We wait for our salads.

More time passes.

Our customers are thirsty. We order another bottle of fine red wine. I ask about the salads. “Momentarily” is the answer I get.

Does it matter that the momentary salads arrive after a wait of half an hour? Not to our customers. There is plenty of good conversation going on; plenty of fine red wine. Time flies; no one seems to notice or care that the slow service is premeditated—that it is a con, a ruse that forces us, like it or not, to drink a lot of wine. We are being bilked, played for patsies.

I am angry; I try to curb my anger. My wife notices how upset I am. She wants to avoid a scene, so she cautions me not to say anything. She says the service is slow because the restaurant is understaffed. I say that’s no excuse. This is a popular reservations-only joint. As reservations came in, management had plenty of time to figure out how much help it needed. If they couldn’t get it; if, indeed, understaffing is the problem, why aren’t the manager, the maître d, and the rest of  “management,” who stand around and cozy up to bar-fly regulars, pitching in to expedite, serve, and bus?

What’s going on here? I tell my wife if it were just the two of us, I would cancel our order and ask for the check; or, maybe, not ask for the check and just walk out.

I am doing a slow burn. How come? Here’s how come: the table next to ours is occupied by customers who, I notice, are not drinking. Correction water is what they’re drinking, their glasses not being refilled as often as they should. They are not into wines, fine reds or otherwise. By the time our salads arrive, their entrées have been cleared. By the time we get our entrées, we are into our sixth and seventh bottle of wine; the table next to ours has turned.

I want to send a note to anyone just arriving and being seated to warn them of the wine scam, but I’m not sure exactly what to say. I can’t wait to get out of the place. I think that’s what I ought to say in a note: “Excuse me for interrupting, but my wife and I can’t wait to get out of this place.”  Then, having read the note, they would ask, “Why,” and I would tell them.

The check comes to over $1600. How much would you tip, keeping in mind that each bottle of fine red wine was $60?

Your answer here: $_______.